


Such is Life

by Intent_To_Stay



Series: Burning with Something [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, will update tags as I go
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-06-08 17:04:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6865093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Intent_To_Stay/pseuds/Intent_To_Stay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey takes what she can get. That is all she has ever known: you take what you can get and hope it doesn't tear you apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Fool

Rey spends her fifteenth birthday knocking a smuggler’s teeth in.

She doesn’t actually know if it was her birthday. Solar systems and standard times have made birthdays a bit convoluted for those who even know the date they were born. But when she was eight and a trader introduced her to the concept via a very generous open party—

 

(Life is inconvenient for a smuggler, they have their celebrations when and where they can.

Rey’s bottom line for generosity was scrap wire too corroded to sell and three portions purchased from Plutt she managed to snatch off the floor simply because she was closer to the ground—

Life is inconvenient for a smuggler, they have their celebrations when and where they can—even if that is in sharp smiles as they watch the needy scrabble for food. Some people rip their pleasure from the universe and it is always an expense to someone else.)

 

But. Rey took what she could get. She decided that was her birthday, and so it was. And now she spent it as she did for every other birthday—not mentioning it and not expecting anything. Jakku doesn’t celebrate birthdays. Not unless you can afford them. The desert doesn’t pity girls with burning eyes and needle-poked hopes and neither do the people in it.

Such is life.

Lungs heaving and ribs bruised, she surveys her work. He’s bloody and senseless and Rey takes one second to rear in the impulse to spit on him. The market—or what qualifies as a market on Jakku—watches with disinterest, but they stare all the same.

Rey laughs as this would be thief groans, rolls over, and spits out blood. Fury claws at her stomach, and she snatches a perfectly functioning compressor off the ground where it tumbled from his hands. She toiled for hours, sliding through wall panel too cramped for her to breathe fully and she refuses to allow some off-world, smug-faced _snake_ to steal it.

The partner watches the thief with disdain and drinks from her canteen. Rey eyes her warily. When she doesn’t draw her blaster, Rey leaves.

Maybe some people are fair in this world. Rey doesn't test it. 

Rey supposes this is a good birthday. A compressor like this should get her at least five rations.

It doesn’t

It gets her one. She knows it should be three—at the very least—and her blood burns. She eyes the compressor in spite and rips it off the trading table. Behind her, Plutt splutters indignantly.

Rey returns to the smugglers.

The woman looks at her coolly. Her partner is no longer on the ground. He sits on a bench, nursing his bloody face. He draws a blaster, small and quick-silver bright, but the woman whacks the back of his head. He grits his jaw and shoves it back into his holster. His nose is still a bit bent.

Rey burns and she stretches her arm out, the ship part gripped tightly in her palm. “You want it?” she asks shortly. It is a nicety. That is the diplomacy you learn in Jakku.

The woman tilts her head and slides her eyes to Plutt and then back to Rey. She doesn't answer for a few seconds before she hums out a simple, “Yes.”

The man snarls. The woman’s stare is enough to freeze the galaxy. He glares, but he removes little coins from a pouch. Republic-stamped and gritty with corrosion. These coins have traded hands quite a few times.

Rey shakes her head. Credits are worth nothing when one person controls the food supply. Plutt can charge whatever he pleases for scraps of metal and coin isn't much different in this respect. “Food," She declares. "Three days’ worth.”

The woman sighs . “Scavengers,” she mutters. She glances at her partner.“Jay, you already got the stuff?”

Jay spits blood. “Yeah.”

The woman gazes at the expanse of the desert. She snorts. “Then we’re leaving anyway.”

They rise and turn to leave and Rey follows. Her blood sings because this is dangerous. Reckless, reckless, dangerous.

But it’s better than the molten lead of unfairness.

After all; it’s her birthday. Rey can rip a little justice from the universe and it will come at the expense of no one.

The smugglers' ship is ratty, but Rey can _see_ dedication etched into the frame. She almost tastes the anxiety of so many deals that could go wrong and the shared elation of when they go right.

Rey stops a bit away, and this is where the foolishness settles in. She shouldn’t have left the market--now they can shoot her dead and steal what they want.

But they don’t.

The woman comes out and tosses a bag of food at Rey's feet. Real food. Rey swallows, but she picks up the sack and inspects before she hands over the compressor. She at least pretends to. It takes only a glance for her to see that this is more than enough.

“You have a good eye,” the woman says. She fiddles with the loose wires, curls them around her finger.

Rey nods. She does.

The woman holds the part up to the sky, her sharp eyes scouring the piece for hidden damage. “My partner and I won’t be back for three months, but find anything else like this and you can expect the same deal.”

Rey’s mouth dries up and the whole world smells of jerky from some animal she will never know. That is a promise.

“I will.”

The smuggler nods and boards her ship. The hatch closes. Thrusters engage. Rey's hair whips in unnatural wind, and she watches as the ship transforms into a glint of iron that evaporates like heat-haze in the upper atmosphere. She blinks and her eyes burn with the aftermath of sun-bright sky.

She feels a deep, deep well of peace and she wonders if this is what friendship is like.

It is Rey’s fifteenth birthday and she marks it as her favorite. 

* * *

The next time around, Rey learns the woman’s name is Maika.

Rey gives Plutt the scrap she collected. He’s been more wary about undercharging her. She gets a fair share. Then she gives all the good things she has collected to the smugglers.

Jay’s nose is no longer crooked. His hair is a worn shade of purple. Rey didn’t know you could color hair. She didn’t know such a color could exist. Rey lives in world of tan and iron, and she drinks up the sight of strange hair like she does the sunset.

He finally comments on it, and she has to tear her eyes away. She hands over a few carefully wrapped parts and clutches at her staff.

A collection of information encoded into little acid green chips. She wrenched them from a partially crushed data droid. She cut her finger tips on the edges. She also has the energy source for a plasma cannon. It’s dead, but Rey knows that sunlight and a few repairs to the circuit will charge it up.

Maika looks pleased. Jay smirks. Rey lets out a relieved sigh and takes the food they give her.

“When will you be back?” Rey asks. Maybe she sounds too eager.

Maika taps a strange beat on her cheek. She weighs the question.

Jay cuts in. “Don’t know.”

Rey feels hollow.

Maika shrugs and nods. “We’ll find you if we do,” she promises. 

Rey latches on to that.

They turn without another glance in her direction and the hull of the ship swallows them whole. She bathes in the same mechanical-magnetic whirlwind of takeoff. She eats up the still lingering feeling of the ship. She almost feels like she is aboard. Like if she opens her eyes, she will see the deep, deep black of empty space and know possibility.

* * *

 They never come back.

* * *

 Rey tries not to feel betrayed. She scratches off days and trades and trades. Plutt grows less cautious of her. She starts feeling hunger again.

She wishes she never met them. It would have been easier to stay hungry.

She wishes she had never met them, and one day she sits down outside her home and feels that calm determination tear. She slams her palms into the sand and snarls.

Her eyes burn but she doesn’t cry. Water is too scarce and Rey hasn’t cried since she learned that fact when she was ten.

But she feels is in her lungs and in her bones. Like someone shoved salt down her throat and told her to live with it.

And because she must, she does. She pulls herself together and uses whatever that feeling is to wake up and scavenge. It drives her past the days when her stomach feels like a black hole and her fingers tear themselves open upon wiring.

Such is life.

* * *

When Rey is sixteen, she hears of Jedi.

She has heard of them before, but never like this. Her knowledge come from jokes told over and over, some with different punchlines depending on where the tellers heard it from.

\--A jedi, his sister, and his father walk into a bar--

But when Rey is sixteen, she hears _stories._

Hi-jah Shin is old as the sand. Everything about her is decaying and humbled. Her eyes are gummy and cataract-greyed. What hair is left hidden under her head scarf is iron wire. Her skin is leather-worn and has a thousand wrinkle-crevices etched where weak muscle twitches.

She sits in a chair of honor and people stare at her hungrily.

Rey has heard of story circles. She tried to sit in on them once upon a time. She was never welcome and never big enough to prove her right to stay.

Hi-jah Shin invited her. Rey grips her staff tightly, but she warily stalks to a tent. There is a fire, its glow peeking through the seems of the dwelling. The wind leeches warmth, and Rey understands why. She has no idea what they use for fuel.

Twenty or so huddle in the tiny space. They turn and stare as she opens the flap and steps in. Hi-jah Shin points towards the front and Rey weaves through a see of legs and knees and sits with the children-there aren't many, but there are enough that Rey knows she is viewed as a child. 

She dosen't know whether that offends her or brings her comfort.

Hi-jah Shin begins speaking. Her voice sounds like engines too old to run. Her vocal cords are ragged from years and years of too little water and gritty air. She speaks and it is the most beautiful thing Rey has ever heard.

 

“Years and years ago, when I was but a little girl, the universe was kept by the Jedi…”

 

On her sixteeth birthday, Rey learns culture. She learns shared history and the value of it. She learns of the majesty and power and _peace_ that ruled the galaxy. Jedi knights, powerful in mind and body, with blazing, burning swords and the might to shift worlds.

Rey learns of it through an engine rough voice and the howl of winds and the crackle of fire.

Hi-jah Shin swallows roughly, clears her throat. She is tired. Rey can see that. Tired and old. But she continues and Rey falls in love with the stars and the worlds that drip from that old woman’s lips.

“Where did they go?” Rey asks when Hi-jah Shin ceases to speak. “Where did they go?”

Hi-jah Shin shakes her head. “Next time, next time.” It is a dismissal.

But no one leaves. Hi-jah Shin eyes them all, and her thousand-crevice face breaks into an frustrated-endeared smile.

Rey has never seen that expression before and she likes it.

Hi-jah Shin sighs. “If you must.”

And like a command three people spring up and lift the basin filled with fire. They set it in front of her. Hi-jah Shin cracks her back is a series of clicks, and Rey wonders how she doesn’t break apart. How her bones don’t come unkint.

Hi-jah Shin breaths deeply. Rey can feel it. The anticipation. The edge of raw hope and agony of it. She feels it, just for a flash, and then she feels wonder.

The fire rises up like a snake, hissing and spitting. It flashes colors oxidization shouldn’t, raw and flaring purple and blue and green. Green so unlike dusty acid lime coding chips sharp enough to slice. Green like the sometimes flare of sinking sun on the horizon. Green like magic and might and _wonder_. A green so great that Rey cries just one drop when it is gone.

Hi-jah Shin slumps and the fire fades. It feels dark and ugly. Rey can’t breathe.

There is a hollow in her throat, in her whole chest. She felt stars sing in her blood and suddenly they were silenced.

The people are solemn. They leave and some leave behind rations as payment.

Rey stays.

“What was that?” She breathes because it felt—it felt like—

“The force,” Hi-jah Shin murmurs. She is old and tired, but Rey is not one known for pity.

“How?” Because stories are one thing and this was another.

The woman laughs softly. “I’ve lived long and seen much. This is nothing. Fire is already so ready to change.”

Rey swallows down the thrill of nervousness in her heart.

“Could—“ she wets her lips. “Could I do that?”

Hi-jah Shin shakes her head and there is pity in her gaze. “I’ve had fifty years of fire to work and that is all I can do. The Force picks and chooses. I had to tear this from it.”

“I could try,” Rey pleads.

“You could,” Hi-jah Shin agrees. She waves her time-worn hand to the basin.

Rey tries.

She really does.

But the fire only ever flickers.

“Come back for the next one.”

Rey nods, and she tries not to feel as if something has been stolen from her.

* * *

 That night she dreams of burning swords and burning worlds. When she wakes she is glad for the desert. It is hot enough to scald, but at least it won’t melt the flesh from your bones. 

* * *

 The next story time doesn’t happen for a while. Work and survive. Rey feels that same longing for sky and it burns in her marrow every time the skies ink over and stars blaze to life.

In dark caverns where prying eyes can't find her, Rey occasionally stares at her staff. She imagines it burning and wonders how Jedi kept their limbs. How they didn’t burn off their hands.

She wonders about the Jedi and the Old Republic and how worlds came to be.

When she hears of another story circle, Rey is the first to be there.

Hi-jah Shin is dusting the one table and small bed she owns. Sweeping off the sand.

“I can do that,” Rey says. It tumbles out of her mouth, unbidden and awkward. She blushes.

Hi-jah Shin smiles. She’s missing teeth. Her cheeks are hollow.

Rey sweeps and tries not to wonder if that will ever be her face.

People come through and politely wrap their limbs into a small space so there is enough room. The oldest sit on the bed, their knees too swollen and their flesh too weak to stay strong against their bones.

Everyone brings something to burn. Dead flowers. Broken woven wicker.

The sun sinks and Hi-jah Shin strikes a match. She whispers and urges the flames to take, insistent and so serene. People urge her on with bright eyes.

The basis flares and flickers. The winds tear at the tent. Children and adults sit on the floor, and they wait anxiously.

Hi-jah Shin sits in her only chair. She breathes deeply. “The Republic was never perfect. I knew this as a child. The Empire was never right. I knew this as an adult.”

The elders, those fully grown, shift uncomfortably. Propaganda is etched into bones. Fear is a brand on the soul, and everyone feared the Empire.

“The Empire was born as the Jedi died.”

Sorrow so deep it feels like it must be an ocean erupts in Rey’s heart.

She didn’t ask for this. She stays still, though. She listens with dread and she mourns the life she lost—If only she was born earlier.

Rey hears of Order 66. She hears of the sudden betrayal. She hears of the slaughter. Every last man, woman, and child. Across the universe, across the galaxy. A complete and utter take over. Done for power and control.

She hates the words and worlds and stars that fall from Hi-jah Shin’s lips. She _hates_ them.

She sits through the stories and she burns. She burns hot, like liquid glass in her capillaries and the fine tremor of seismic quakes in her limbs.

She learns of the Empire’s rise and the blood it drenched across the stars.

It makes her _sick._

And it is over all too soon.

People obediently file out. Rey stays.

“Why did you tell that?” She demands. Her fists clench and her eyes are hard as flint.

Hi-jah Shin ages before her eyes. She shakes her head. “It is true.”

“But why? We don’t need it!” And Rey’s words die on her lips.

She sounds like a child, even in her mind.

She says it anyway. “We were happy with the Jedi. Why would you take that away from us?”

Hi-jah Shin’s eyes fall. “Is that all you ever need? Happiness?”

Rey clamped her jaw shut because she didn’t know the answer.

Hi-jah Shin breathes deep. It whistles into failing lungs past a throat sore from hours of talk. “I’ve lived long. The truth is more important than fantasy.”

“Who cares?!” Rey snaps. She clenches her fists because she can't hit a feeling with a stick. She can't beat sorrow and anger and dread into submission. “None of this is important to survive!”

“Is that all you need? Survival?”

Rey snarls in frustration _because that isn't the point!_  She stalks out of the tent. She stomps across sand that refuses to hold her weight and thinks of fire that would burn up a world.

She didn’t _want_ this.

She didn’t want this.

“Come to the next one.”

Rey doesn’t turn around. She pretends the words lose themselves in the howling air, even as they stick to her heels like thorns.

* * *

 That night, Rey dreams of bight eyed children and a man who burned up the whole universe. 

* * *

 Rey goes to the next one. She almost doesn’t. She arrives late and stands at the very back.

Hi-jah Shin talks about the Empire and the Sith and the last Jedi who hid across the universe. She speaks of twins separated at birth. One a desert dweller to Jedi and one a princess to general.

Luke and Leia Skywalker.

Skywalker. The name whispered across the galaxy.

Hi-jah Shin weaves together lines upon lines; the destruction of a planet killer and the bravery of the Rebellion. The death of Darth Vader, the last Jedi who fell to evil. The fall of the Empire and the rise of New Republic.

And though Rey’s heart aches, she feels deeper. As if these stories burnt out all her bones and filled her with raw star light. She waits for everyone to leave.

“I’m—“ she says. “I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t know what she apologizes for.

Hi-jah Shin smiles and it is full of pity. “It’s hard growing up,” she says knowingly.

Rey bites her lip, and her face screws up. She nods and looks away. She refuses to cry.

Then Hi-jah Shin lays her hands across Rey’s shoulders. “Come to the next one.”

Rey breathes a deep shuddering breath and she nods. 

* * *

There is another story. Rey sits in front.

Hi-jah Shin coughs like a dying engine the refuses to restart, but she tells her story.

It is about the Skywalkers. General Organa and Jedi Master Luke. Rey learns of all the rumors stitched together by a mind old and sharp.

Hi-jah Shin has spent a life time bringing things to better condition. Stories and gossip retold so many times they’ve decayed are no different that of mechanics. It isn't too hard to fix them if one has all the parts.

She gets a few things wrong. She gets most of them right.

Rey believes it all. She believes it from the way it sings to her soul. She flies on the words that float from Hi-jah Shin’s lips. She dances in the glints of light and the raw, raw hope that shines from the story.

Luke, rebuilding the Jedi. Leia resisting the First Order.

Her blood sings. Rey grins.

She stays behind. She helps clean up. She gushes over the story because Rey takes what she can get and stories are too marvelous to ignore.

Hi-jah Shin doesn’t share her elation. Rey doesn’t notice.

* * *

 She begins finding reason to visit Hi-jah Shin’s tent. A part she “couldn’t fix.” A cool piece of wood that could be burnt.

Rey can’t help it. It feels nice. It feels nice to have a friend. Rey has drubbed almost everyone she ever met and scavengers hold grudges like no other. She never had many friends because few ever stayed long and those who did didn't want to babysit brats.

“You could see it all,” Hi-jah Shin says to her one evening. She is bent over at her old salvaged metal table. Her eyes strain to follow wires and her finger tremble as she tries to connect them.

Rey laughs and continues squinting at a complicated thermal regulator.  “See what?” Hi-jah Shin says strange things like this often. Normally, she avoids clarifying.

Today she does not.

“The universe,” she answers plainly.

Rey stiffens slightly. “No,” she says a bit sadly. “I can’t.”

Hi-jah Shin raises her brows. Her forehead crumples and Rey is forced to look up from the technology in her palms. Rey can see only her back and the tense way she picks st wires. “You can,” She insists, and her voice holds a bite that Rey has never heard before.

Rey shakes her head, and swallows the lump in her throat. Anxiety prickles at the back of her neck. “No, my family is coming. I can't go."

Hi-jah Shin sighs. She sighs like someone faced with a brat with no sense and Rey feels offended.

Rey frowns. “They are,” she insists. Her browns furrow in anger and frustration. “They’re coming back and I need to be here when they do.”

Hi-jah Shin sets down the part she was examining. She twists in her seat, and the spine cracks loud and sharp. Her eyes are gray like iron wire and gummy like veg-meat.

“Child,” She says. “I’ve seen you grow and I’ve seen you wait and I will tell you what I have told every other child: _there is nothing here for you._ ”

Rey clenches her fists. “My family is coming so I need to wait," She says patiently. She tries to say it patiently, at least.

Hi-jah Shin shakes her head empathetically. “You know as well as I do that they aren’t going to come.”

“You don’t know that,” Rey snaps impatiently.

“I’m old,” Hi-jah Shin says. “Old and scared. But, Rey—“

Rey realizes that is the first time she has said her name. Not “child.” Not “you.” Rey.

“Rey, you have a brilliant future waiting. Don’t live here and die here waiting for someone who will never come.” Hi-jah Shin sounds a bit desperate. Her eyes are burning through her age, and Rey feels the need to step away from the fire.

“They are coming,” Rey repeats. “So that won’t be a problem.”

“Even if they are, they don’t deserve you to be here!”

Rey stills.

“You have a good head and a greater heart—you can leave and _live._ ” Hi-jah Shin’s voice breaks and she rubs at her eyes with crooked finger-tips. “Child—Rey—don’t make my mistakes. Don’t wait when you can go and search—don’t wait when you can _find_.”

Rey steps back, because Hi-jah Shin, with all her control, all her determination, all her serenity, all the strength Rey idolized, all the things that made her know it was possible to survive—that Hi-jah Shin is  _crying._

And Rey is angry.

“You don’t know me or my family! They are coming back!”

“Child,” Hi-jah Shin says gently, “ _you_ don’t know your family. It has been over ten years. Ten long years. Please—“

Rey cuts her off. “No—I—I’m not listening to this!” Rey wheels around, her limbs not responding correctly, and she feels her shrunken stomach churn.

“I’ve been saving,” Hi-jah Shin pleads. Rey freezes. “I’ve been saving for years, because I waited too long and I didn’t leave when my work was worth something! I can finally leave and, Rey, you can too.”

“Why?!” Rey shouts. “Why me? There are dozens of others—“

“And they chose to come here. They made their beds. I still remember the day you came—“ Hi-jah Shin stops. “I remember the day every child arrives because there are so few.”

Rey feels frozen through. Her skin is revolting, trying to crawl off her body.

“Rey, you don’t want this—they aren’t coming back.” Hi-jah Shin breathes heavily and she sniffs wetly. Her old sand-ragged throat croaks, “Don’t make my mistakes. Don’t die in a desert having never seen anything else.”

And then she burns. “ _Don’t,_ ” Rey yells, “push this on me! I’m happy! I can wait as long as it takes!”

And Rey storms out. She stamps her feet on dunes that shift like water. The world can’t hold her.

Behind her she hears Hi-jah Shin call out desperately, “Come to the next one!” 

* * *

 Rey doesn’t. Bile creeps up her throat and she feels sick. She feels like a star on the edge of imploding and all she has is spite to keep her going. She refuses to go.

She curls up in her little home, burning, burning—

 

 

 

COLD

 

 

 

The regret is so deep she shouts. Lost opportunity, lost, lost, _lost._

Through it all, the deep agony in her chest and how she could cough up her regret like thick oil, she whispers, “I’ll come to the next one.”

And she falls asleep and dreams of a boy who slaughtered a culture that already lost so much and she feels _hate._

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

There is no next one.

 

 

* * *

Four days later, someone finds Hi-jah Shin in her tent. She doesn’t stir. Her flesh freezes like permafrost. Rey helps with the disposal, and it is the coldest thing she has ever felt.

Rey helps with her disposal, because you can’t bury a body in the sand.

Rey helps because she can’t help but feel guilty.

She is the first to claim her tent. She beats off anyone who tries to touch her stuff.

In the end Rey takes the Basin. That is all. Hi-jah Shin had many things, but that is all Rey wants. Then she allows people to tear the old woman’s home apart.

Everyone respected her in life, but dead is dead is _dead_ and the dead have no use for blankets or tents or spare parts. Scavengers tear that little tent apart and fight over the scraps. By sun down, there is no evidence that Hi-jah Shin ever lived. Her belongings are no more, for they belong to someone else.

Such is life.

* * *

 There are no more story circles.

Hi-jah Shin held that tradition together by the skin of her teeth, but there is no one else who will. There is no trust in this world beyond the walls of her tent. Hi-jah Shin was a sacred place and now she lies beyond the reach of the living.

Rey weeps.

She lives as she always did, but iron and oil clog her veins. Regret. Regret steeps in her lungs like metal-bitter water and she lives because hunger and thirst push her to do so.

She never lights the basin. Scratched and metal-knicked, and heavy with insulation and a deep base, she hides it in a corner and never looks at it.

Except when she does.  

It is forty days. Rey knows because she scratched off the day Hi-jah Shin died with a small star.

She avoids looking at it for forty days until she can’t avoid it any longer. She lifts it with reverent hands and brings it outside. She sits in the shade and traces the edges with her fingertips. The sun is dying over the edge of the world. 

She lets herself wonder at all the darkened spots where metal burned and scorched. She picks at the gouges in the metal with her nails. Its base holds little chunks of wood that haven’t burned. Rey saw Hi-jah Shin unscrew the bottom and place them safely inside for the next circle all those nights she stayed late or simply stayed at all. 

She smells Hi-jah Shin’s tent, smoke and rising bread and the smell of decay.

It comforts her, and Rey can’t understand when and why emotions suddenly decided to steal her mind. Rey upends the basin and hugs it to her chest. The rim is pressed so deeply, it leaves marks across her skin. It hurts dull and flaring but—

Rey takes what she can get.

She gasps and coughs and tries to remember every single word Hi-jah Shin ever said. She tries to re-imagine how deep and wide the galaxy sounded. How bright stars and swords burned and how whole _worlds_ could fall, explode, implode.

She can’t.

The memories she dregs up are pale and acrid, like dangerous smoke that comes from sour engines.

Hope, she recalls, was always a bit bitter with Hi-jah Shin.

Rey takes a shuddering breath. It is night. She stares up at inky sky with blazing stars and the world is dull. The galaxy is too far for her to reach—too far for her to climb.

Rey swallows thickly. “The,” she begins, but she coughs and her face screws up. She takes a minute to push down—she shoves it all into a ball so small, she can hardly notice the thorns it has. “The worst part is,” Rey tells the basin. “I’m still angry.”

Rey sighs, and it is lost in the howl of the wind. “I wish you hadn’t told me that,” she confides. “You could never leave things alone—“next time, next time”—and it would always be _good_ and then _bad_ and then good again.”

The basin is cold. The rough grain of it glimmers in the starlight. “But I want—“

Rey cuts off suddenly and she tucks her knees to her chest and ducks her head. A little ball of thorns pricks at the inside of her heart and she can’t _take_ it.

She wanted and wanted and _wanted_ so many things. She wanted Hi-jah Shin to be here. She wanted to talk to her. She wanted to have never met her because it is always harder to go back once you have tasted good things.

“I’m sorry,” She whispers, her lips a breath away from the metal. “I’m sorry, sorry, sorry.”

She apologizes for the words she said, the thoughts she thought, the whole of her existence, for not listening. She has never had to apologize to someone. She hates that she can't get forgiveness from the dead. She hates that she can't give it to herself. 

She tastes ash on her tongue. _That is regret_ , she decides. _This is what it tastes like_.

And when the pain passes, when it dulls to an ache that Rey can breathe through, Rey uncurls her stiff limbs and shivers. The night freezes metal and flesh, and the sand can strip skin.

She knows this, but she can’t go inside.

She watches numbly as the basin tips off her lap and clangs against the side of her home. It rings hollow and cuts off dully when it hits the sand.

Except it doesn’t.

Over the shriek of wind and the echo of her metal home, Rey hears clinking. She bites her chapped lips, and unease floods her stomach. She tastes salt. It tastes like dread and obligations.

She hauls herself out of the sand that started to bury her while she sat still. Her breath catches at the ache in her chest, but she numbly reaches for the old relic and painful reminder. She sits back on her knees and tries to breathe. She knows-some faint whispering in her ear _lets_ her know what she will find. She aches in pain because she doesn't want to open it.

She dose it anyway. This is her penance. This is her punishment.

She takes the base in her palms and twists. It creaks open and grinds sand between the crevices.

Credits spill out.

Rey can’t breathe.

She slowly tips the basin on its side and everything spills out into the sand. She scoops them into her palms and her dead finger-tips can't tell what they are holding.

She lets the money spill out and tumble back into the sand. She counts them out, one by one. She lays them in loose sand and slides them around. She organizes them by type. Then by serial number. By year. By every organizational method she can think of until she has to face the facts.

 

She has four thousand four hundred thirty two credits to her name.

 

 

_“You could see it all,” Hi-jah Shin says._

_Rey laughs. “See what?”_

_“The universe.”_

 

 

Rey sits in the dark with all that will ever be around her and eyes that could swallow galaxies and she tastes salt on her lips.

 

 

 

It tastes like a terrible, terrible promise.


	2. The Magician

Somewhere in her head, Rey is screaming. It is senseless denials, the kind only children can believe completely. She glances at the overturned wreck of her kitchen before she gets back to work.

It takes her most of the night to decide what to do. It takes her the rest to pack the three outfits that she owns and make a run to the wreck of a dead star destroyer. She hides her doll and fighter helmet in the crevices deep in the hull. She hides the basin even deeper, but all of its contents go in a discreet pouches hidden in her boots and knapsack and work belt.

In absolute darkness, Rey brings the metal monstrosity to her chest one more time and breathes a promise. She will not die without having seen nothing else. She promises that.

Then she rides to Niima Outpost just as the sun starts to break over the dunes.

Plutt is already sitting in the convenience shack.

Rey grits her teeth, already prepared to fight long, weary battles. “How much for the speeder?”

Plutt laughs disdainfully. “I have no need for scrap.”

Rey flares upset for the barest second. But then she stills and she feels nothing but patience and something like power. Not like knocking a smuggler named Jay bloody or like watching fire flare and burst colors that she had never known existed. Something quiet. Something soothing, like an old voice that spoke until it couldn’t anymore. Like an old woman who endured.

_I have no use for scrap_

Rey realizes that neither does she.

She gives it to a child of almost nine and tells that girl to guard it with her soul. This girl’s slave master was killed on a bounty and there isn’t anyone coming for her unless it is to control her. The song and dance is familiar. Rey is just giving her a chance like she wished someone had for her.

If she tells her about treasure that only children can find (“It’s too small for anyone else to reach, and almost everything is intact inside.”), then it is merely because holding on to something she can no longer have is pointless.

If she tells her about a vacant AT-AT and a place that won’t bury her in sand nightly, it’s because Rey remembers what kindness feels like, and the ache is too much to bear without leaving some of it behind. 

Rey finds some merchants and barters for passage to wherever they are heading next. It’s really just like a job, because she has to help load the ship, but after that is done, she just sits back by the window and watches.

She watches from the viewport as Niima Outpost grows small. As the sand blurs into the white-gold of fresh sun on sand. They leave the atmosphere and Rey feels something slip off her shoulders. She has her obligations, but they are new and they don’t feel like chains.

She watches the stars blur through the jump to hyperspace.

She’s free.

* * *

 

Kitree cautiously pilots her new speeder to her new home with her new knowledge burning a hole in her head.

She pokes into the body of an old wreck, and although it is disheveled and upturned, it is a place to live. She picks at flowers that are laid carefully in bottles, examines scavenged cook ware and a data base full of flight simulations that she can’t understand.

She sees a wall with hundreds of tally marks, all in neat little rows. She sees much larger marks, all of them scoured much deeper than the others, slanted in off-tilts and little crosses.

Kitree is illiterate. Her mother before her was the same: Slaves don’t need to know how to read or write. Kitree never wanted to learn, because when she was young and still with her mother, another slave was shot for writing where his master had forbidden it. Knowledge was dangerous.

Knowledge is dangerous, but Kitree isn’t a slave anymore and she wants with a sudden, vicious _need_ to know what was written on these walls. She wants to know why Rey, who Kitree had never spoken to before, entrusted her with secrets and safety.

Why her, and no one else?

It takes her weeks of stolen time to learn enough alphabets to recognize the right one. She considers it worth it. She finally knows the words that she gazed at as she drifted off to sleep. She finally knows them, and she she knows they aren’t meant for her and they never will be.

She knows this, but she hopes that might change—that she might have someone look for her, someone who will find her.

Kitree knows that the message isn’t meant for her, but it applies to her all the same.

So she falls asleep once again, weeks later and a new language gnawing at her mind, turning this message that will never be for her over and over in her head.

 

I’M COMING BACK

WAIT FOR ME


End file.
